Storying the blue Anthropocene from the oceanic South: oscillating and turbulent perspectives on the planetary crisis

This project seeks new critical and creative perspectives on the planetary crisis in forms of storytelling from the global South and the southern hemisphere that address the oceanic and hydrological effects of the Anthropocene. It will assemble a range of literary, filmic, folkloric, popular and public narratives with which to bring into focus the turbulent interactions between the climate crisis, on the one hand, and the afterlives of imperialism, growing inequality and the mass displacement of peoples, on the other hand. Developing its analytic models from tidal currents, monsoon systems and the ocean-atmosphere coupling phenomena of El Niño/La Niña and the Indian Ocean Dipole, it will explore new ways of thinking between the islands and landmasses of the South through the movements of ebb and flow and the extremities of flood and drought that these oscillations orchestrate in southern waters. At the same time, it will elaborate methods for reading from the south at planetary scales as it follows interactive inter-elemental systems that structure the terraqueous nature of planetary life in heightened – and now also increasingly deranged – forms while simultaneously marking the contours of an uneven globe.